Jupiter Crash
by Mrs.Monster
Summary: The first time Spencer and Molly met, she thought she'd nearly killed him; the second time he spat hot coffee all over her; and the third time he caught her quitting her job. CM, S5; Sherlock, post series 2.


**Disclaimer:** I own nothing related to Criminal Minds or Sherlock.

**Author's Note:** This pairing. _This pairing_. I just picture them smiling at each other awkwardly, drinking coffee and sometimes sharing cardigans. This will be a few parts long, and I swear I'll finish it, the question is just _when_.

Jupiter Crash

He'd honestly never expected to fall in love.

When he'd been a boy, love wasn't predominate in his life; he knew that his mother loved him, there had never been any doubts about that. He'd known that at one point, his father must have loved him, but after a while he hadn't been so sure.

Now that he was a man, Spencer Reid knew the solid type of love that could only come from family through his team.

He had honestly never expected that he would meet a woman and fall for her so hard, that his knees would be a good metaphorical two inches in the dirt.

But that didn't mean that it wouldn't happen.

**...**

It was a warm spring, as they so often were in the DC area, and Spencer met Molly Hooper on a Sunday. Under the advisement of his physical therapist, he'd been walking through Hylbrook Park, exercising the muscles in his still recuperating left leg. The brace and the cane had gone a few weeks previous, but he still walked with a pronounced limp that he didn't expect to go away for some time yet.

His brown cardigan was buttoned nearly to the throat, hiding the fact that he was only wearing a white T Shirt underneath; it felt odd to be so underdressed, even on what was supposed to be down time. Hands shoved deep into the pockets of his trousers, Spencer walked with no real destination in mind.

It was nice, occasionally, to be alone. Spencer enjoyed solitude, but too much of it was detrimental- this was something he knew well. Too much time spent with only his thoughts could be a dangerous thing. But here, in the open, fresh air, life blooming all around him, it was pleasant.

Spencer tripped over her outstretched legs. She'd been sitting on a bench just off the path he'd been taking, relaxed and reading a book. He went down hard, arms windmilling, what would have been an embarrassing screech if he weren't too preoccupied with avoiding a pavement-face plant. His hands scraped the pavement, knees colliding painfully. Near-agony shot through his left thigh, and it took his breath away.

"Oh my God!" A panicked, heavily accented, voice said from somewhere above him. "Are you alright?"

Spencer only groaned, and rolled to the right, removing pressure from his left leg.

Small hands gripped his shoulders, pushed his long hair away from his face. "Hello? Are you alright?"

"I would be wonderful if you would remove your knee from my stomach."

"Oh my God!" she said again, quickly moving and shifted her knee away from his abdomen.

She helped him up, and to the bench she'd tripped him from. Spencer sat panting for a moment, while she patted him down, presumably checking for further injuries and not trying to pick his pocket or some other nonsense. Pushing his hair from his face, Spencer squinted up at the accidental assaulter through the dark lenses of his sunglasses.

She was a pretty girl; small, elvish, with long light brown hair that fell nearly to her waist and large slightly mismatched eyes; left hazel, right brown. _A Picasso girl; _the thought sprang to Spencer's mind as she felt along the back of his head, checking for bumps.

"- I am so _sorry!" _she was rambling. "I was just reading, and I didn't see you, and... are you sure you're alright?"

"Yes," Spencer's answer was sightly muffled as she was now hurriedly patting at his face. He reached up and grabbed her hands when they went for the back of his head again, surprised at himself for not recoiling at the physical contact; Spencer was normally a strictly _no touching _type of guy. The small woman went still, then immediately looked to the ground, face flushing embarrassedly. "I'm fine," Spencer said finally, gently pushing her away from him.

The woman frowned, looking down at the leg that he was working back and forth, attempting to shake off the bone-numbing jolts of pain.

"Your leg-" she began, but Spencer cut her off.

"It's not from this. Well, it is, but not _originally _from this."

She nodded, bringing her lower lip between her teeth, looking around awkwardly for a moment before collecting her book and her bag from the bench beside him.

"Well, I better be going. I'm Molly, by the way. Molly Hooper." She was backing away from him. "Sorry for nearly killing you."

"That's dramatic, but I'm Spencer. It was, uh, nice to meet you?"

A nervous giggle burst nearly violently from Molly, and she gave him a tiny wave before turning and walking away, floral skirt flouncing around her knees. Spencer sat on the wooden bench and stared after her.

**...**

Spencer met Molly again nearly two weeks later. He'd returned from Albuquerque with his team two days before, and his team-mate, and temporary boss, Derick Morgan had texted him about meeting for lunch at a small diner hidden away on Fourth Avenue.

"How may I help you?" a familiar voice asked, and Spencer looked up and found Molly Hooper in a blue waitresses uniform, a matching perky blue cap on her head. The expression on her face could only be described as utterly put-out as she held an order pad and the short nub of a number two pencil, not looking at her patrons.

"Only if you don't try to kill me again," Spencer joked, and Derick looked at him surprised. He was surprised himself.

Molly looked up quickly, eyes wide in what was near-horror. "Spencer! What are you doing here? Well, to eat obviously, um, what can... what can I get you? And your..." she trailed off, looking over at Derick who grinned at her, amused.

"This is Derick Morgan, work colleague, friend. Derick, this is Molly Hooper. She tripped me in the park a few weeks ago."

Of course he'd told Derick all about it, and _of course_ Derick's first question was: _Was she cute? _To which Spencer awkwardly cleared his throat, looked away and answered in the affirmative.

"_Anyway_," Molly cleared her throat. "What can I get you?"

They placed their orders, and she quickly walked away. He and Derick both watched her go. Derick whistled lowly and turned back to Spencer.

"She is cute. A little quirky maybe, but cute."

"Yes, I suppose so." Spencer suddenly found his paper napkin very interesting.

Derick, seeming lighter than before, asked, "You going to get her number?"

"What? No, I mean, I don't know, I mean... uh... well, I barely know her."

Derick was laughing outright now. "That's the point, genius. You get the girl's number, you go on a date, and you get to know her."

Spencer pressed his lips together, face turning red, and Derick let it drop as Molly brought coffee to their table. After adding liberal amounts of cream and sugar, Spencer sucked about half his cup down, trying to keep himself occupied. He didn't want to tell Derick, despite the fact that the older man already knew, that he'd never asked a girl for her phone number before. He'd never been on a date, either. In nearly twenty-seven years, he'd only kissed two girls, and only one of those instances had been pleasurable. Maggie Eyring when he'd been fifteen and getting his second doctorate; she'd kissed him as a bet: _kiss the freak. _And then there had been Lila Archer, the actress he'd met on a case in California. She'd seemed genuinely interested while he'd been there, but neither of them had tried to contact the other once the case was closed and he returned to DC.

Molly brought their breakfast to the table, and Spencer attempted to smile at her. Unfortunately his mouth was also full of coffee, which promptly ran down his chin, making him cough and splutter. Derick, Molly's uniform and his own white T shirt were all splattered with coffee. Wiping his chin with the back of his hand, Spencer tried to formulate an apology, but Molly just refilled his mug and hurried away to the back of the restaurant.

"Smooth. That was real smooth," Derick said, wiping his face with a napkin.

**...**

"-it's the second stack of plates you've dropped _this week_, Molly. I have no choice but to take it out of your pay."

_I am a goddamned forensic pathologist. I have a goddamned doctorate, I do _not _need this bullshite, _Molly Hooper thought, not really paying attention to what her supervisor was railing on about. She tugged at the skirt of her blue waitresses uniform, attempting to cover more of her legs, mentally cursing the day that she met Sherlock Holmes. It was _his _fault that she was in this predicament, in this city, in this bloody _country. _

Molly had lived in London her entire life; she'd worked in London, she had friends in London. And she'd fallen in love in London, with possibly the smartest man on the planet. Sherlock Holmes. Since she'd met him on her first day at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, she'd been head over heals with crystal blue eyes, wild dark curly hair and a mind so brilliant, so _electric_ that it couldn't be described. The only problem was, he didn't love her in return. Sherlock barely _noticed _her, until the day that she made him realize that she could _see_ him; she could see through him, passed the veneer of cold disconnect. He certainly noticed her then, and then he had asked for her help.

Not just another body, not just access to the lab; she saved his life. Molly had helped Sherlock stage his own suicide in order to trick Jim Moriarty, a madman who had set his sights on Sherlock, and coincidentally her ex-boyfriend. Sherlock had assured her that she would be safe, that no one would ever know of her involvement in the situation. He'd been _wrong_.

Jim's right hand man (and, she suspected, much more than that), Sebastian Moran, had figured it out. He'd remembered her when Jim hadn't counted her worthy in his final threat against Sherlock and the people closest to him. Sebastian blamed Molly for Jim's death; if she hadn't helped Sherlock, Jim would never have put a pistol in his mouth.

She'd been targeted by the former military man, who was now running Jim's criminal empire. Sherlock, living on the lam while he attempted to disassemble said criminal empire had revealed himself to his brother and appealed for protection on her behalf. Molly knew that Sherlock hated asking his brother for anything, and she had briefly wondered if he would just let Moran have her so he wouldn't have to, but he'd come through and Mycroft had sent her to the US. To Washington DC. He'd set her up with a flat, a job and an influx of income on top of that.

Molly wasn't sure if it was meant as a joke, Mycroft setting her up to work in this hole-in-the-wall diner; he could never seem to remember that she was a _doctor_, that she wasn't some simple woman.

Her supervisor was still going on about the plates she'd broken, that she couldn't care less about, when she cut across him. "Yes, yes. Take it from my pay. My shift's over, I'm leaving now."

Untying the apron from her waist, she dropped it onto his desk, collected her bag from the small closet in her supervisor's office and left the diner. Molly hailed a cab outside as she still refused to drive on the wrong side of the road _and _the wrong side of the car and her flat was halfway across the city.

Her cover story was that her parents had died in an airplane crash, and she'd moved to the State's with the generous amount of money paid to her from their life insurance policy, and the money from the sale of their home. It wasn't difficult to remember as both her parent's were in fact dead, her father from cancer when she'd been in her early twenties, and her mother in a auto accident only a few years later. According to her story she was taking a bit of time to _find herself _after the accident and after her fiance had left her, and she'd decided on a fresh start. The job was so she could integrate herself; to lessen the culture shock.

She was on the verge of phoning Mycroft and telling him that he could _stick _the bloody waitressing job, but she didn't want to seem ungrateful. The man was keeping her alive after all. However that wouldn't stop her from telling her supervisor to shove it if, and when, she'd had enough. Molly didn't put herself through years of university, busting her arse, studying until she developed migraines in order to obtain her doctorate to take orders from some skinny flunk-out who could barely spell his own name.

Unlocking the door of her brick-face flat, Molly sighed at the empty, professionally decorated place. This wasn't her home, and she didn't feel at ease here. Her cat, Toby, wasn't here, these weren't her things, hell she wasn't even wearing her own _clothes_. Mycroft's assistant had chosen them. She'd bought a few things for herself since coming to DC, but not much. She didn't want to get comfortable here; soon Sherlock would eliminate the threat to their lives and she could go _home. _

Back to London, and back to her own life.

**...**

The first time Molly had met Spencer she'd thought she'd nearly killed him; the second time he spat hot coffee all over her; and the third he caught her quitting her job.

"-I am a goddamned _Doctor_, I don't need this _bullshite! _I could remove your _spleen _with a spatula and make you _eat _it!So you can just take your broken plates and shove them-"

"Uh, Molly?"

She whirled around, perky white cap sliding askance.

"Of _course_ you would be here right now!" Spencer was standing by the cash register, hands in the pockets of his green cardigan, however Molly was too angry to be embarrassed.

He cleared his throat and his voice squeaked slightly when he spoke. "I- uh was just um, _wondering _if I could get... I mean, I don't want to bother you at work but I was going to ask if I could have your-"

Molly cut off his rambling. "Do you want to get coffee?" she asked, and Spencer's eyes went wide.

"... okay?" he looked past her shoulder at the boss she'd been yelling at, whose face was bright red.

Molly jerked the cap off her head, threw it on the ground, looped her arm through Spencer's and pulled him out the door.

…

_To be continued, uh, sometime... with a few more parts._


End file.
